Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in in Hezhou (Linxia), Gansu province, from 2009 to 2010 and one month of follow-up research in 2012, this historical legal ethnography argues that Chinese Muslims (Hui) practice a form of , heavily influenced by Chinese custom and constrained by socialist law, that is, in turn, formative of a mixed legal subjectivity. In the reform era or what I call 'uncanny China,' academic and political discourses label "Hui customary law," a foil to legal modernity. I propose an alternative to Hui customary law in , an amalgamation of revealed sources and Han Chinese-influenced customs that is limited by socialist law. illustrates legal creolization, marked by the collapse of categories and the emergence of novel forms. Han nevertheless demonstrates the familiar division between ritual and transactional aspects of Islamic law. The operation of these areas of law varies in the context of the Northwest. Whereas purity law unites the Hui against the non-Muslim Han, devotional aspects of law vary between the jiaopai (teaching schools) and menhuan (Sufi organizations). Jiaopai are differentiated "instituted fantasies" that link Hui to various Muslim heartlands, partially through orthopraxis. Hence, ritual matters are the basis for jiaopai's imagined diasporas vis-à-vis multiple Islamic authorities. In the area of social transactions, including family law, marriage, divorce, inheritance, and property, jiaopai differences matter less. However, adherence to such areas of law is no less fundamental to being Hui. demonstrates plural patriarchies in both substance and procedure. Local Muslim leaders called ahong mediate disputes regarding family law and, in so doing, mediate the variant sources of . Procedurally, their patriarchal authority is appropriated by that of the Party-State. Ethnographic data, including interviews, observations of ritual process, legal transactions and disputing, and analysis of textual and archival material shows to be a field of contest. Drawing from semiotics, practice theory and psychoanalysis, this dissertation shows that the diverse and occasionally contradictory sources of law, authority, and power in melancholia. are reflected in Hui subjectivity-a source of ambiguity and sometimes